This article offers a critical discussion of the claim that international law has existed in a transhistorical manner. It reviews dominant legal doctrine and challenges the ideological assumptions that present international law as a universal and continuous order detached from relations of power. By examining the historical conditions of emergence of international law and the unequal structure of international society, the paper argues that legal discourse often conceals dynamics of domination. The study calls for a more critical understanding of international law grounded in history, inequality, and the political uses of legal concepts.
Abdelhamid Elouali (Sun,) studied this question.